Propaganda Watch: Russian Social Media Ads–9/8/19

Russian President Vladimir Putin superimposed into a Russian Flag. Image by Lenny Ghoul.

This is part of an ongoing series where I review some of the ads purchased by the Russians. In doing so I hope we can get a better understanding of what they were trying to do, and how to recognize it the next time we’re faced with propaganda.

If you want to follow along, the ads can all be downloaded here. All of today’s ads can be found in the 2016-q2/2016-04 folder.

There were so many memes that I’ll end up posting more later on, perhaps to break up other topics for levity. While there was a small bit of repetition for this group, there was a lot less than I see from other Facebook groups.

I kind of wish I knew the backstory behind the image on p(1)000539:

I don’t know if p(1)0003802 was meant to be an insult to people, or if they thought Americans would relate to the sentiment:

P(1)0003800 goes a little bleak:

When I first started looking at all the ads with memes I wondered what their purpose was. As I saw more and more I realized they not only build a posting history for the groups, but by joking, they remind people how broke and unhappy they are. And, ad p(1)0006516 reminds subtly points out the nation’s racism:

THIS IS AN OPEN THREAD. There is at least one thing I can promise about April’s ads–there’s no Bernie in speedos.

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